Benchmark Your Supply Chain with Gartner Supply Chain Benchmarking

Our supply chain benchmarking measures supply chain excellence

Guide future supply chain strategies with supply chain benchmarking

Seventy-six per cent of supply chain executives say the number of disruptive changes to supply chain management has increased compared to three years ago.

The supply chain organisations that survive and thrive in disruptions use supply chain benchmarking to assess their current capabilities as a starting point for future supply chain strategies.

Supply chain executives can leverage our supply chain maturity model for performance benchmarking. This model details five maturity stages and is grounded in supply chain management best practices.

Download the report to discover:

  • five stages of supply chain maturity;
  • how to benchmark your supply chain maturity; and
  • the role of maturity models in strategic planning and the benchmarking process.

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    Without Gartner, I would have struggled to obtain supply chain benchmarking and execute, and the entire process could have taken 10 years. Gartner lit the fire that we needed, putting us at least six years ahead of schedule.

    Supply Chain Leader, Manufacturing Industry

    The value of supply chain benchmarking

    How do your supply chain operations compare to the operations of your peers? Understanding your KPIs and developing your benchmarking process is vital.

    Forward-thinking supply chain leaders use supply chain benchmarking to actively measure process efficiency, cost-effectiveness and risk management capabilities relative to industry competitors. They focus only on the benchmarking data that matter most, and they avoid goal setting in a vacuum, which frequently leads to misaligned expectations and sub-optimised performance. They benchmark what supply chain excellence looks like and how to evolve supply chain management practices to drive innovation.

    When used correctly, supply chain benchmarking helps mitigate supply chain disruptions by identifying high-value, actionable insights.

    Measure supply chain excellence with Gartner Supply Chain Benchmarking

    Gartner Supply Chain Benchmarking allows you to measure performance against peers, identify strategic priorities and future needs, and position the supply chain function to drive business goals. Supply chain leaders can achieve supply chain excellence using our supply chain benchmarking:

    • Make decisions and leverage empirical data on supply chain improvement.
    • Defend supply chain costs, spot risks of underinvestment and quantify improvement goals and rates.
    • Excel where it matters, optimise costs and be more effective.

    Measure supply chain excellence with Gartner Supply Chain Benchmarking

    Gartner Supply Chain Benchmarking allows you to measure performance against peers, identify strategic priorities and future needs, and position the supply chain function to drive business goals. Supply chain leaders can achieve supply chain excellence using our supply chain benchmarking:

    • Make decisions and leverage empirical data on supply chain improvement.
    • Defend supply chain costs, spot risks of underinvestment and quantify improvement goals and rates.
    • Excel where it matters, optimise costs and be more effective.

    Insights you can use

    Gartner Supply Chain Benchmarking shows you where you stand and where you need to go on your journey to supply chain excellence. Benchmark your function’s contribution to business strategy, analyse competitive benchmarking and plot improvements to organisational structure, talent, technology and processes.

    Prioritise your supply chain metrics

    Are you tracking the right supply chain metrics? Prioritise the supply chain metrics that help in identifying improvement opportunities and making better business trade-offs. Before you redesign your supply chain metrics dashboard, read our report: Strengthening Supply Chain Performance Improvement Initiatives.

    Improve supply chain effectiveness

    Improve supply chain effectiveness by assessing supply chain performance against a structured framework and identifying the highest impact action steps. Download our report to discover how the Gartner Supply Chain Score redefines supply chain maturity assessment.

    Peer benchmarking on supply chain budget

    Compare costs in your supply chain budget using Gartner peer benchmarking. Align resource allocation to strategic priorities and lead informed discussions about changes to the supply chain budget with the board and CFO.

    Questions about becoming a Gartner client?

    Testimonial

    Supply Chain Strategy for Optimal Inventory

    A large enterprise construction company’s regional supply chains were operating at cross-purposes, due to a lack of governance from the global centre. Gartner expertise in demand and supply planning helped the client transition from a “make-to-stock” (MTS) to a demand-driven “make-to-order” (MTO) process, which helped them achieve $8 million in inventory reduction.

    Experts on supply chain benchmarking

    Gartner’s supply chain experts include more than 100 people worldwide. Meet a few of our leaders.

    Kimberly Ennis
    Program Manager R&A

    KC Quah
    Sr Director Analyst

    Kimberly Becker
    Sr Director Analyst

    Mark Atwood
    Managing Vice President

    Supply Chain Benchmarking FAQs

    Long regarded as the industry standard for end-to-end supply chain performance measurement, the Gartner Hierarchy of Supply Chain Metrics helps you prioritise the right supply chain metrics. Unlike other benchmarking methodologies that compare metrics in isolation, the Gartner methodology looks at the interdependencies between supply chain metrics to identify improvement opportunities and make better business trade-offs. We dynamically track more than a dozen supply chain metrics across seven core supply chain process areas spanning multiple industries. The Gartner research team will analyse your supply chain metrics and provide you with a customised Hierarchy of Supply Chain Metrics report rating your performance against industry peers to identify areas of supply chain leadership and opportunities for improvement.

    Find out more about Gartner’s Hierarchy of Supply Chain Metrics, specifically how it can help ensure you are tracking the right supply chain metrics.

    The Gartner Supply Chain Score—an independent assessment of how your supply chain organisation compares to the organisations of your peers—enables you to improve supply chain effectiveness. The Gartner Supply Chain Score assesses supply chain performance against a structured framework. With the Gartner Supply Chain Score, a supply chain executive can identify and prioritise the right capabilities to boost the supply chain team’s performance. Once you know where to improve, the Gartner Supply Chain Score is the gateway to practical resources proven to drive action step by step, no matter your starting point. 

    Find out more about how the Gartner Supply Chain Score redefines supply chain maturity assessment.

    Gartner Supply Chain Budget Benchmarking enables you to compare costs in your supply chain budget so that you can better plan the upcoming yearly supply chain budget. Peer benchmarking helps you align resource allocation to strategic priorities and lead informed discussions about changes to the supply chain budget with the board and CFO. Gartner Supply Chain clients use the peer benchmarking as part of cost optimisation projects, digital transformation initiatives, mergers, acquisitions and other organisational restructuring. Data include spend and staffing/headcount in the supply chain as well as sourcing, procurement and quality functions, whilst also being segmented by industry, geography and company size.

    Find out more about Gartner Supply Chain Budget Benchmarking (link not yet live), specifically how it can help you secure a business buy-in for supply chain budget increases, achieve the right supply chain staffing ratio and make smart investments in business growth and transformation.

    Supply chain leaders constantly seek opportunities to improve supply chain performance—in part by leveraging supply chain benchmarking data to evaluate improvements that other leading organisations have achieved.

    A supply chain benchmarking project is successful when it collects the right data, analyses them logically and leverages them as one of many inputs to drive investments in supply chain improvement initiatives.

    The first step in supply chain benchmarking is the collection of benchmarking data and the comparison with competitors/competition.

    Once the comparison is established, the next step is to identify opportunities for improving supply chain performance.

    Once a supply chain benchmarking project is complete, it is important to analyse the results to understand how the interdependencies influence your functional trade-offs. By identifying the probable causes for poor performance—versus looking at supply chain metrics in isolation—you can gain insights on which key levers improve supply chain effectiveness. These insights are invaluable inputs to determining what actions will deliver the greatest returns.

    One set of supply chain metrics that can exhibit a strong relationship is forecast error, finished goods inventory and perfect order fulfilment. If the ability to forecast is poor, it is reasonable to expect that the ability to deliver orders on time and in full (OTIF) to customers will be impacted. Additionally, if forecasting capabilities are weak, suppliers may also struggle to provide on-time performance that could also impact stock availability, leading to lower customer service.

    A second supply chain benchmark example involves these supply chain metrics: supplier on-time, supplier quality and inventory levels. Often as a result of poor supplier relationship management, long lead times, insufficient capacity or ineffective demand forecasting, supplier performance is impacted. When supplier performance is uncertain, companies often take the decision to buffer with inventories. Higher raw materials and finished goods inventories are also usually accompanied by high inventory obsolescence (or write-offs), particularly for companies with short product life cycles. In some cases, poor supplier performance may also have a negative impact on plant use.

    A third supply chain benchmark example involves these supply chain metrics: forecast error, plant use and inventory. In response to unpredictable surges in demand, supply chains might make short-term changes in the production plan to accommodate urgent orders. This typically results in lower plant use and often higher inventory levels to serve as a buffer.

    The Gartner Hierarchy of Supply Chain Metrics identifies the 17 critical metrics to focus on across the end-to-end supply chain: forecast accuracy; perfect order; SCM cost; cash to cash; accounts payable; accounts receivable; inventory total; supplier quality; supplier on-time; raw materials inventory; purchasing costs; direct material costs; cost detail; production schedule variable; plant use; WIP and finished goods inventory; order cycle time and perfect order detail.

    A supply chain scorecard is a concise set of metrics derived from the key drivers of supply chain operation, which makes them easy to understand and actionable. The best scorecards have around 12 supply chain metrics. Cross-functional partners value the supply chain metrics, and as metrics become outdated, they are filtered out of the supply chain scorecard. Supply chain metrics are retained for the sake of continuity, not for immediate business concerns.

    Gartner experts are trusted advisors for more than 2,500 supply chain leaders and executives.

    Gartner helps organisations grow and maintain ownership of strategic initiatives. Make the right decisions with trusted insight and objective advice.